Note 23 — Chapter II · BURGOS.

It was well that I used the word “delighted” when I wrote this page, for this passage no longer delights me as it did. I visited Burgos again last (1863), and found the Cathedral undergoing a sort of restoration; masons cleaning up everything inside, and by way of a beginning outside they had widened the passage to the south door, so as to make it square with and of the same width as the doorway; to do this a slice had been cut off the bishop’s palace, at some inconvenience to the bishop, no doubt, the result of doing it being simply that much of the beauty and picturesqueness of the old approach to the church is utterly lost for ever. Of one thing, such an unsuccessful alteration satisfies me—little indeed as I require to be satisfied on the point,—and this is, that in dealing with old buildings it is absolutely impossible to be too conservative in everything that one does. Often what seems—as doubtless this thing did to the people of Burgos—the most plain improvement is just, as this is, a disastrous change for the worse. And when we find old work, the reason for or meaning of which we do not quite perceive, we cannot be wrong in letting well alone. It is to be hoped that Spain is not now going to undergo what England suffered from James Wyatt and others, and what she is still in many places suffering at the hands of those who follow in their steps!